The present invention relates to job search analytical tools, and more particularly to a method and system for job-seekers to quantitatively conduct self-evaluation and job qualification analysis for the purpose of being economically efficient in assessing career opportunities, using an interactive web site.
The task of conducting a job search is one that fills many people with dread and anxiety. A job hunt requires a major effort to research the many different opportunities available to the job seeker, filter those opportunities that are either undesirable or unattainable, and pursue a select few from the remaining positions. Much of the anxiety and frustration comes from the experience many people share of expending a significant amount of effort on the pursuit of a particular employment position, only to discover that the effort was wasted because the job-seeker is either unqualified for, over-qualified, or in some manner a poor match in the eyes of the employer. All the effort that has been put into the pursuit of the job is for naught, and the entire process must be restarted on a new goal once the job-seeker realizes that he is not a good fit for the initial goal. This leads to frustration and disappointment in the process itself of finding a job.
Much of the anxiety, frustration, and wasted effort that job-seekers experience is a direct result of the job-seeker's unfamiliarity with the requirements and expectations of the potential employer for a given position. A job-seeker may feel that he or she is perfectly qualified for a given job, only to find out too late that a prospective employer typically seeks a more qualified individual for the position sought. Alternatively, the job-seeker may have the necessary qualifications but the job-seeker's salary expectations do not mesh with the employer's. Other factors may make the candidate a bad fit, such as geographical limitations, minimum on the job experience, educational background, etc. These conditions are at least in part due to the fact that the job seeker is unaware of where the job-seeker fits within a pool of other job seekers for the same position. Despite this longstanding problem, there is an absence of useful tools that would allow a prospective job applicant to conduct a self-evaluation of the prospects of obtaining a particular job before the effort of pursuing the job has occurred. Such a tool could alleviate much of the anxiety and frustration over the job search process by informing an applicant that either they are a good match for the position (and thus should actively pursue the job) or that they are a poor fit for the job (and should focus his or her efforts toward a more suitable position).
In many instances, a job-seeker is handicapped in his effort due to a lack of information regarding the market he is seeking employment in. Too often, the job-seeker is generally limited to performing research through job openings on job websites. Job postings tell the job-seeker what a fraction of the market is offering for compensation; not what the market is actually paying. Also, it may be difficult for a job seeker to estimate how much competition exists in the labor market, or how long the job seeker can expect to be seeking employment.
A job seeker may assume a considerable risk in pursuing a new job; sometimes quitting a job and moving to a new region of the country in search of employment. Furthermore, when the job-seeker does secure an interview opportunity, he is often handicapped in the negotiation process as he may not know the customary salary range for the specific labor market. The job-seeker may only know what the interviewing employer is offering. Conversely, the prospective employer is armed with the knowledge of what it pays its existing employees. All of the aforementioned difficulties that a job-seeker experiences are even more prevalent for those persons who are seeking lower pay/low qualifications types of jobs. Those people will not likely have the benefit of a professional employment recruiter that a professional person often uses. In many cases, a job seeker is hired for a job, accepting a salary that is less than market value, or the job seeker will remain unemployed for a longer period than necessary due to pricing himself too high for a specific position.
While job qualification tools exist, predominantly they exist for the employer's benefit to assist the employer in weeding through many job applicants for the same position. For example, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2004/0267554 (Bowman) is directed to an on-line job interview system where a prospective employer posts a job opening into a database, along with a job description and a list of job skills which are rated as required, preferred, or not required for the job. A potential employee accesses the database to identify a position of interest. He then ranks his own experience with the specific job skills set (expert, proficient, limited, or none) and inputs that data into the system, which then scores his input based on a scoring algorithm that applies weighted constants to the data. The employer then gets a list of all the job seekers, and sorts the list based on the scores from the on-line interview.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2006/0265270 (Hyder) is directed to a job searching and matching system that gathers personal information from a job seeker and job description information from a prospective employer, and correlates the information looking for commonalities. Alternate suggested jobs are provided for consideration by the potential employer based on the correlations.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2005/0131756 (Benson) is directed to an automated data collection and scoring system for screening potential job applications, that allows an employer to request data about an applicant from external sources (such as credit bureaus and employee references) and then automatically grades the data received according to a customized set of rules. The grades are compared to a pre-set scoring range to determine if the applicant meets, does not meet, or exceeds the criteria for the job. The characteristics used to evaluate an applicant may be adjustably weighted by the employer.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2007/0162507 (McGovern) is directed to a bi-directional matching system which allows a potential employee to enter relevant qualifications information and attributes he is seeking in a position, and a prospective employer to enter relevant information about itself and an open position, as well as attributes the employer desires in a good match for the position. A matching system then compares the data entered by the job applicant with the open position in the system to generate a match level, which is reported back to both the potential employee and respective employer.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,191,176 (McCall) is directed to a data matching system that seeks to match job applicant data files with potential employer data files for particular job openings using a common language architecture, and by applying weighted characteristics to both job seekers and employers.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2003/0229510 (Kerr) is directed to a method for recruiting skilled personnel by evaluating data submitted over a network using software configured to discriminate between potential applicants. An initial evaluation of all candidates against a core template of questions may focus an applicant pool. Only those prospective employees having qualifications meeting or exceeding those of the threshold standard continue on with the recruitment process. Kerr discloses the use of weighting multipliers corresponding to applicant answers appearing within a pull-down menu.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2002/0013735 (Arora) is directed to a computer-based system for matching the preferences of potential employees and employers, using variable weighting selected by the system user.
Certain online systems currently available on the internet allow a job-seeker to enter variable data regarding his educational and employment history to assist the job-seeker in identifying job opportunities. Such websites may provide a range of salaries that are being paid for a targeted job in a specific region. However, these websites present substantial limitations for the job-seeker as they are collecting job-seeker data primarily for purposes of reselling it in aggregate form to the human resources department of large corporations. Consequently, the data gathered is derived from the pool of job-seekers that are the users of their respective systems. The data can be severely flawed for many reasons: extremely small samplings, biased samplings, redundant samplings, incomplete samplings, and samplings which rely upon large extrapolations; any of which can lead to incorrect output values for the job-seeker. Additionally, due to the fact that the data for these programs is derived from the job-seeker, inaccuracies or misrepresentations by the job-seeker when inputting their data will further undermine the data integrity. These programs often do not gather certain points of pertinent data that employers use when interviewing potential hires, such as: FICO score and the desired salary of a job-seeker.
From the foregoing, it can be seen that the bulk of the tools available to job-seeking applicants are designed to benefit the employer, and those that also serve the job seeker many times come into play only after the applicant has invested the time and effort to research and apply for the position. In such cases, the time savings to the job seeker may be minimal or non-existent, and in any event the tools do little to allow the job seeker to properly conduct a self-evaluation of the prospects for a given position at the outset of a job search. In addition, many of the systems described above that are intended to benefit the job seeker are confined to a particular employer or position, rather than a job description in general. Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a tool that allows a job seeker the opportunity to fully measure the prospects of obtaining a position in a selected field before the job seeker has put forth the time, effort, and resources, and emotional investment in a job search.